Instead, from behind him, a cluster of rocks, some of them the size of a fist, hurtled off the ravine floor and arced up at her.
Vestara nearly winced. An overt use of the Force—somewhere on Nam Chorios, a Force storm would soon arise, possibly injuring or even killing people—and the realization that this mattered in the least to her was a second unwelcome surprise. Ruthlessly, she suppressed that emotion.
She could have sidestepped the cloud of stones. Perhaps her opponent expected her to, or perhaps he intended to lunge in the direction he anticipated her to take. And she did spin to her left, just not far enough to be completely safe from the stones. She continued the twirl into a spinning side kick.
She was still more than a meter from her adversary, but her boot sole connected with one of the incoming stones, sending it hurtling back toward the man’s face.
He flinched, bringing his blade up to deflect the stone.
She followed the stone, felt an impact against her left shoulder, felt her body twist from the blow, but continued into a single-handed lunge with her blade. Her lightsaber slid into her opponent’s body just beneath the heart. She planted her forward foot and dragged her blade up. Its red tip slashed through the heart.
Wide-eyed, her opponent staggered back and fell, dying.
Vestara straightened. There was pain in her left shoulder where one stone had connected, and in her right foot where she’d kicked the other, but her injuries seemed minor, manageable.
She gave a cautious glance back over her shoulder. Luke’s opponent was already down, in two large pieces, severed at the waist. Luke was hurtling toward Ben, but Ben was already in the follow-through of a horizontal slash that sent his own opponent’s head leaping off his neck.
Vestara turned her attention back to Tola. The woman hadn’t moved or drawn a weapon. Vestara gestured toward the ground with the tip of her blade. “How about you surrender to our justice?”
“Some other time.” Tola held up the object in her hand—it looked like a comlink of some sort—and pressed a button on its top surface. Then she leapt laterally to grab the bottom of the cable leading up to the speeder winch above. Already retracting, the cable drew her up the ravine wall at a rapid clip.
Ben gestured as if to drag her or the speeder down through use of the Force, but Luke slapped his arm down. “Not worth it, Ben. Consequences.”
Ben looked irritated. “I forgot.”
Tola got to the top and sprang up into the pilot’s seat of the speeder. She offered Vestara and the Skywalkers a mock salute. Then she pressed the button on her comlink again.
Vestara was hit from the side—it was Luke, bearing her and Ben to the ground behind her outcropping.
Their own airspeeder exploded, throwing durasteel and plastoid and flame in all directions. The shock wave from the blast hammered Vestara’s ears but not her body—the outcropping, a durable blast shield, caught all debris headed their way.
The three of them rose. Tola’s speeder was gone. So was their own airspeeder, but not the same way—it existed now as a crater of burning junk and a column of smoke that, as it reached the top of the ravine, was caught by a crosswind and torn to shreds.
Ben sighed. “You know her, huh?”
“She works for my father.” Vestara collected her lightsaber, which she’d dropped when Luke hit her.
“Dad, she was doing what you did with me at the temple on Dorin. A Master hanging back to watch her students fight an enemy so she’d learn about them.”
Luke nodded. “Though she seemed perfectly content to sacrifice them.”
Vestara replaced her lightsaber on its clip. “You’re a big prize, Master Skywalker. Well worth the sacrifice of a few Sabers and apprentices.”
Ben frowned. “I wonder how they traced us here.”
Luke grinned at his son. “It doesn’t matter how they did. I’m just grateful that they did.”
Ben looked his father over. “You weren’t hit by debris to the head, were you, Dad?”
Luke shook his head. “Trust me on this, Ben. Sometimes it’s actually a good thing to run into your enemies.” He glanced around. “People from Kesla Vein are going to be here in a few minutes to investigate the blast. We’d better be gone when they arrive. Let’s get going.”
HAPES SYSTEM
“SIR. FLOTILLA BREAKING ORBIT, THREE BATTLE DRAGONS AND AN ESCORT of frigates and destroyers.” That was the voice of Dei’s pilot and second in command, Hara, drifting aft out of the cockpit.
Querdan Dei did not bother to poke his head into the cramped cockpit. The area in which he stood—a small compartment, one and a half by two meters in height, that provided access between cockpit forward, main work compartment aft, air lock port, and refresher starboard—was the only spot on this damnable spacecraft that was bare of apparatus, the only spot where he could practice his forms, and he wasn’t quite through with those exercises yet.
He straightened and placed his forearms against the compartment ceiling. Outside, he would have stretched, making himself a straight line from toes to fingertips, but there was no way to do that here. He swayed through a somewhat constricted version of the Snake Ascending a Waterfall exercise.
Hara, a lavender-skinned Keshiri woman, middle-aged and taciturn, had not one trace of Force sensitivity or imagination, but she was reliable, intelligent, and diligent. Dei kept his voice calm, though he knew Hara would not have alerted him if the flotilla was not potentially of great interest. “Enlighten me.”
“They’re accelerating away from the planet at atypical speed. We’re seeing transponder telemetry from only two Battle Dragons. The third is masquerading as a medical frigate, Jeweled Delight. Their formation suggests the Jeweled Delight is at the center of a protective pattern, at the sweet spot of overlapping weapons coverage.”
Dei sank smoothly from Snake Ascending a Waterfall into Mountain Storm. That exercise normally called for full splits, which were impossible here; instead, he kept his right knee cocked and fully extended only his left. Once he was down, he began the series of intricate arm movements that constituted the storm, suggesting winds around a mountain range. “All sensors and countermeasures to full power. Fall in behind that formation and pace it.”
“Sir?”
“Hara, the computer between my ears tells me that the odds are very high that we are looking at the Queen Mother departing Hapes. What does the computer embedded in this ghastly craft tell you?”
Another voice, male, floated out from the cockpit. “Still running those variables, sir.”
“Please execute my orders while running those variables.” With thigh strength alone, Dei slid back up to a standing position, then lowered himself for a second iteration of Mountain Storm, this time with his right leg extended. He felt the craft shift under him as Hara heeled it and began a stealthy approach into the flotilla’s wake. The maneuver caused him to wobble, spoiling the perfection of his form. He sighed.
“Sorry, sir,” the pilot said.
“Not your fault, Hara.” He finished his form and again exerted himself to slide up to a standing position. Then, finally, he felt he’d done enough, just barely enough, to warrant a return to work. He moved forward into the cockpit.
The blasted claustrophobic cockpit. There were three seats, two forward and one back, all with control boards pressed in so close there was barely room to get into them. And there were no viewports, just monitor screens providing a live holocam feed of what was going on outside. A vehicle without viewports issued no visible light for other sensors to detect. This was efficiency. But efficiency, as almost always, came at the expense of beauty and comfort.
He squeezed into the rear seat, the command chair. Hara occupied the forward port-side chair. Fardan, a young fair-skinned human male, was in the starboard seat as communications and sensor operator.
Dei looked at him. “Well?”
Fardan turned to give Dei an apologetic look. “You’re correct, sir. The computer gives a high degree of confide
nce to the possibility that this is the Queen Mother’s flagship.” The young man had a long face, not as handsome as the Sith preferred, and wore his long black hair in a braid. He looked like a younger version of Dei.
“Plot their course as closely as you can, to a thousand significant digits if you have to. When they jump, I want to know the exact direction they’re jumping.”
“Yes, sir.”
Dei turned his attention to Hara. “Have our reprovisioning ship stand by to follow us.”
“Yes, sir.” She typed a few sentences onto her small comm board and transmitted. Compressed text caused a much tinier potential blip on enemy sensors than voice, which in turn was smaller by several orders of magnitude than holograms, so this crew used it whenever feasible.
This craft that Dei commanded brought him both exasperation and pride. Exasperation because it was so inelegant. Designed and manufactured in the Corporate Sector, it was, on the exterior, oval and seamless, coated in a sensor-absorbing material that was black in the depths of space but could assume ambient colors when near a planetary surface. Designated the EE-104 Fisheye and named Cryptic Warning, it was as unlovely as a particularly nasty-looking piece of candy. All it needed was lint from a pocket sticking to it to complete the picture.
On the other hand, it was a very expensive, highly efficient tool of espionage and war. Designed for the purpose of coordinating sneak attacks and for sitting for days or weeks on station, unseen, to monitor enemy activities, it had the most impressive array of sensor and stealth features Dei had ever seen. The Sith had captured only two such craft, and Gavar Khai had assigned one to the command of Querdan Dei. That was an unmistakable sign of faith in his abilities.
Dei knew that his operation was a long shot on Khai’s part, devotion of a finite set of resources to the Jedi Queen project. Lord Taalon had seen a vision of a possible Jedi Queen in the future; Gavar Khai had noticed a marked similarity between the description of the Jedi Queen and the current Hapan Queen Mother, who had once been a Jedi. Clearly Tenel Ka Djo was not the Jedi Queen; her appearance was slightly different, and there had never been any indication that she would choose to be fitted with a prosthetic arm, while the Jedi Queen clearly had two working limbs.
But Tenel Ka Djo had had a daughter, lost in the last war, and she could have another. So Khai’s orders were simple. Take up station at Hapes; find a way to gain access to the vicinity of Tenel Ka Djo; and kill her.
Dei knew that he was nothing but a tourniquet for possible loose ends. He was used to assignments that were both very difficult and mostly unrewarding. His own interests never leaned toward Sith politics, toward stroking the egos of those in power. And this was why, at the age of forty, he was still only a Saber.
He wouldn’t have had it any other way.
Hara’s voice cut into his meditations. “We’re outside the Hapes gravity well and we’ve been on a specific course, laser-straight, for a couple of minutes. The other craft in that flotilla are forming up, mathematically perfect, along that course. I think they’re going to jump.”
Dei glanced at Fardan. “Plot probable destinations.”
Fardan looked back at him, eyes wide. “Across an entire galaxy? Every potential arrival site? There will be thousands to choose from.”
Dei smiled. “Prioritize by probability. First, run the route out to the galaxy’s edge. Factor in recent news feeds, locations from the Queen Mother’s history, spots along the route that are close enough to constitute gravity wells that would pull the flotilla out of hyperspace. What do you get?”
Fardan turned back to his control board.
“Flotilla entering hyperspace.” It was true; on the monitors, the magnified image of the flotilla was suddenly gone, leaving nothing but empty space.
Hara maintained the Cryptic Warning’s course and Dei maintained silence while Fardan worked. Finally the young man turned around again. “Just over six thousand potential hits. But prioritizing with the factors you suggested gives us fewer than ten with any known relevance.”
“What’s number one?”
“Hutt space, Si’klaata Cluster, planet Klatooine. A desert world. It’s the site of a recent slave rebellion, which ties in to Alliance politics, which interact with Hapan politics. With the Jedi controlling a portion of Alliance politics, we have a reinforcing cross-tie of the Queen Mother’s Jedi interests. We have a report from Fleet Communications of Sith and Jedi interactions on Klatooine recently, even though those facts have not yet appeared on Alliance news, still another cross-tie.”
“Very good. Log all possible arrival zones, still arranged by that probability. And prepare a jump to Klatooine.”
Dei leaned back and stretched while his crew members went about their business.
If this turned out to be a fool’s errand, if he were abandoning his station at the Hapes system incorrectly, Gavar Khai might choose to have him demoted or killed.
But one did not achieve greatness by limiting risks and keeping one’s head down. Life was short; excellence and fame were far more enduring. It only made sense to risk the one for the others.
KLATOOINE
Allana screamed again before Leia could reach the little girl’s compartment. Leia’s gut tightened. Lightsaber unlit but in hand, she charged at the compartment door. It snapped open, barely getting out of the way in time for Leia to pass through without slamming into its durasteel surface.
In the compartment, in the dark, lit now only by a column of light admitted by the door, Allana flailed in her bedsheets, struggling with an unseen enemy. Anji, her fur so puffed up that she looked twice her size, crouched in a corner, ready to pounce—there was just nothing to pounce on. She growled at Leia.
Leia sat on the edge of Allana’s bed and held the girl. “Allana. You’re dreaming. It’s all right. You’re just having a bad dream.”
Allana’s eyes were already open. Now, no longer staring wildly, they fixed on Leia. “Fire, she’s burning up.” There was such misery in her voice that it made Leia’s heart ache.
Leia heard a sigh of relief from behind her. She turned to see Han, dressed in nothing but drawers, his blaster in hand, lower his weapon and switch it to safe mode.
Leia gave him a little smile. “Bad dreams. I’ll take care of it.”
He nodded. “I’ll brew us some caf. It’s almost dawn anyway.” Still clumsy from sleepiness, he moved off. The compartment door slid shut.
“It wasn’t a dream.” Allana was fully awake now, but she was obviously unwilling to let go of what she’d experienced. “It was real.”
“Look around, sweetie. Is anyone on fire?”
Allana shook her head, but her jaw was set, so like Han’s and Jacen’s in its stubbornness. “But she will be.”
“Who?”
“Mommy.”
Anji hopped up on the bed and settled on the sheet between Allana’s feet. The nexu remained a little puffy. Her attention was all on Allana.
Leia felt a little taken aback by the girl’s words. For Tenel Ka to enter a conversation now, hours after she had accepted the negotiators’ invitation to come to Klatooine—an invitation and an acceptance that had not been announced—could be more than coincidence. Allana was Force-sensitive.
“Tell me about your dream.”
“She was smiling at me. She was wearing robes like everyone here wears. She was out there on the sand and I was running to her. Then there was a man made of fire, bright burning fire. He grabbed her from behind and she started burning.” Tears began to roll down Allana’s cheeks. “She was just looking at me real sad and she was burning up. And it wasn’t a dream. It was different.”
Leia used a corner of the sheet to mop up the tears. “Maybe it was more than a dream. But that doesn’t make it the truth, doesn’t make it the future. It could be leftover pain from when your mommy lost her arm. That would have been like burning.”
“I felt it through the Force?”
Leia nodded.
“But why would the Fo
rce do that to me?”
Leia smiled. “One of the horrible things about life is that you hardly ever know something like that right now. Later on, you figure it out.”
“Is she coming here?”
Leia paused before answering. “I wasn’t going to tell you. It was going to be a surprise. But yes.”
For once, news of this sort didn’t seem to make Allana happy. She didn’t smile. “The man on fire wants to kill her.”
“If there is such a man, we’ll stop him. Or your mother will. She’s very, very good at that sort of thing.”
“Uh-huh.” Allana didn’t seem convinced.
“You feeling better?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You want some water or milk?”
“Uh-uh.”
Leia hugged her. “You go back to sleep, then. Everything will be fine.”
“Uh-huh.”
Once out in the lounge, Leia dropped into a seat beside Han and let out a long sigh. “We may have some new trouble.”
“Can I shoot it?”
“Please do.”
HWEG SHUL, NAM CHORIOS
KANDRA ASKED IT A DIFFERENT WAY, JUST TO BE SURE THAT SHE HADN’T misunderstood, that there would be no ambiguity. “So you’re certain neither Grand Master Skywalker nor either of his companions could have stabbed you?”
On the other side of the old, elaborately carved Ithorian wood desk, Mayor Snaplaunce nodded. “I was watching them take off when I felt the vibroblade enter my back. Official city telemetry followed the shuttle on its flight path until its movements became erratic. My assailant was someone here in Hweg Shul at the time, and was neither a Skywalker nor the young Khai woman.”
“You seem to have recovered fully.”
“I was saved by ignorance. My assailant drove his blade in where human kidneys would have been. With Ithorians, those exact spots are occupied by back muscle. So the wounds, while potentially dangerous because of blood loss, were not immediately fatal.”
Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi: Conviction Page 27